Xbox One catches up to the Playstation 4: Will Titanfall help Microsoft Surpass Sony?

Back on Even Footing?

So the research firm The NPD Group reported today that the PS4 was the best selling console last month. Wait why am I going over the Playstations 4’s dominance over the Xbox One again? Well that’s because this month the gap between the two consoles has decreased significantly since it was reported in January that Sony had sold almost double the units that Microsoft had. Reportedly Microsoft sold over 90% of what the PS4 sold in terms of unit sales. And since the Xbox One is $100 more expensive, Microsoft made more money this month than Sony did, according to the NPD group. How did Microsoft catch up to Sony in a month?

It’s cause of Titanfall right?

That may be partially true, as the excitement for the game has been incredibly high in the days following its release date on March 11th, 2014 (I have heard from a few friends who got their hands on a copy of the game that it is RIDICULOUSLY awesome). There was a lot of speculation that the anticipation and eventual release of Titanfall would give a much needed boost to Xbox sales.

But it should be pointed out that Titanfall was released in March, which means it was not included in The NPD Group’s numbers when calculating console sales. That’s not to say that people wouldn’t have purchased Xbox Ones in anticipation of the release of Titanfall, but it could also have to do with Sony’s initial success.

Will Titanfall put Microsoft Over the Top?

‘It’s hard to understate how incredibly important Titanfall is for Xbox,’ Yusuf Medhi, chief marketing and strategy for devices and studios at Microsoft, said in an interview.

It has been no secret that Microsoft has been hoping that Titanfall will convince enough consumers to purchase the Xbox One so that it can catch up and even beat Sony’s PS4 sales. In fact, Microsoft announced that they would be releasing a limited edition Xbox One that came with Titanfall for the same price as an Xbox One alone.

The company hopes that Titanfall could do for the Xbox One what Halo did for the original Xbox and jump start console sales. The game has gotten very very strong reviews from numerous game review magazines and Xbox One users who have purchased the game. We’ll see who wins the month of March, but the console war isn’t over by a long shot.

As a graduate of UCSD with a degree in International Studies, Kevin is interested in the US stock market and how it affects not only the American public, but the international financial community as a whole.